I neglected to upload this photo last week.. but it was the...

I neglected to upload this photo last week.. but it was the super moon over Ashland PA about a week ago in November.. great shot down Walnut Street..

bonniekristian: If “did not vote” was a candidate, it would...

bonniekristian:

If “did not vote” was a candidate, it would have won by a landslide. 

A perfect summation to the year in politics from @bonniekristian

Black Mirror mania: I love this show

I love this show.. I have avidly watched it since the program’s inception onto NETFLIX.. The pigs.. The tech… The lessons of morality and the consequences of people’s dirty deeds online. The future is now. Evident in this program: The cautionary tales of horror that can happen when tech goes wrong and the virtue of an honest life..

The newest season of Black Mirror was loaded onto Netflix around Halloween. Due to a lack of time, I have yet to watch about 1 and a half more episodes. But the pure joy I have in doing so makes me actually want to take it slow.

I recall quickly moving through the entire series of STRANGER THINGS. By the time it was done, I wanted to go back and start from the beginning.

Black Mirror is a bit different. Each program makes you ponder more than the next.. Each show has twists and turns that throw your mind into a loop of madness. Each program makes you feel like it’s real and, equally so, feel a sense of dread for our collective Internet-driven future.

The far best episode in the entire series thus far (my opinion of course) is ‘Hated in the Nation.’ Some others only call this episode solid but 'unremarkable’ but I think it is brilliant.

It takes into account a dwindling bee population and how our society may delve into tech to save the planet, and terrorism, hacking , assassination, murder, and espionage. Along with a lot of fun grammatical uses of the F and C word for emphasis. The show was pure joy.. It was over an hour long and could have easily been a successful box office hit. But thankfully because of Black Mirror and Netflix, we can have the show beamed right to our electronic devices.

In Hated in the Nation, a technology company invents a high tech drone bee to pollinate the planet. During a hack attack, someone gets the chance to control the bee population to use it for murder. A 'hash tag’ battle begins on social media. And the person most hated in the nation becomes a victim. That is just the beginning. It weaves itself into a moral play and a final act of redemption during the post-modem and Mortem.

You just have to watch it to understand what I am talking about.. It has quickly become of the best shows/movies/things I have ever watched.

I have grown to despise so many vast portions of social media while… Of course… Using it as well. Hashtags and red flags abound … I just can’t stomach seeing the 'trending’ words of the day. I hate myself for often looking.. But it’s how we get news. Opinions. Statements. Hell, it’s how we picked a president in 2016!

Social media.
And antisocial disorder. They go together so well.

Black Mirror’s HATED IN THE NATION is a must watch for those nervous about social media’s power, or for those who think they can act on devices without consequence.
There are consequences.
Perhaps in the future, the consequences will be fatal and final.

No more fake news. Long live fake news.

For people lacking a connection to the world over the past week, take note: There has been consternation, division, anger.. regret.. vitriolic rage. The election of 2016 has left charred corpses along the political battle lines. Whether it’s the purge of Chris Christie confidants within the transition team or the rioting on several city blocks across America, things have been tense. The other night, Donald Trump had the nerve and gumption to ditch the press and go for a steak dinner with family alone. You’d think world war three was declared with the reaction.


All of this political fervor, hopefully, will subside by the time the cold months of winter hit. But there will be a longer and more far reaching event…


The media world has been up in arms over the Trump victory. Though their actions most likely led to increased coverage and potentially aided in a Trump primary victory during the early onset of this year, the made a choice mid-way through 2016 to take on the Republican nominee more ferociously than Hillary Clinton. As a result, alt-right sites and other ‘media’ blogs started popping up on Facebook and Twitter. By the time the election had come in November, I had enough of all of it. I turned away from Facebook and other social media sites because it all became mentally too much to handle. It was an overload of information . But sadly so often that information lacked one important thing: Truth.


Since the election, collective soul searching has apparently forced Google and Facebook, including Twitter, to react. And now, a 1984 style removal process seemingly has begun. The ‘fake news’ sites have been getting deleted, or Google ads have been taken from them, or Facebook has been actively working on having users report sites for misleading information.

….and this is where some of my own fears begin.
Let me first say this: One of the most offensive social media sins—common on Facebook mostly—is the clickbait nonsense of fakery and eye-grabbing headlines that don’t amount to anything except false information and websites packed with ads just to make pennies on a dollar off of your click. It’s a cheap and tacky thing, to link such sites, on your own newsfeed. You need to proceed with caution. If your information is true, you can lead yourself into hateful debate. If your information is false, someone will “Snopes” you and you will forever look like a fool who fell for it.
That said, there is also a certain amount of first amendment fear in my heart. Yes, fake news is out there. But what fake news? Who determines that?

The problems of a polarized nation are constantly multiplying.


This year, after Trump won the election, a fan of his commented to me that, “maybe now he could do something about the media.” I asked pressing questions of the person about this. What resulted with some inane banter about how Trump should ban the New York Times and other media outlets from reporting ‘lies.’


While that opinion is frightening in itself, the mainstream media may argue that press freedom and constitutional rights should not apply to ‘bloggers’ and other non-media people. But who determines that?


Alex Jones and Matt Drudge may have been the two most important people in the year 2016. If TIME magazine was honest, they would name the alternative media as the person of the year.


And that has created a backlash from the mainstream. The Donald Trump press-less steak dinner episode is just the beginning of a tumultuous relationship.


Private companies have the right to do as they please when it comes to private affairs of business. So if Google blocks ads on pages, there may be no legal issue—unless of course the situation devolves into class action or civil litigation.
But there is a long term problem taking place, and the crackdown on ‘fake news’ may highlight that.


Over the past 15 or so years, the populace has dumbed down faster than a dial up internet connection. We have gone from reading newspaper reports written at a 7th grade level to only reading headlines written on a 1st grade level. We click on the bait and then we replicate. We don’t know much of anything except what some misleading headline told us. Social media has also given us an excuse to actually be dumb! We can pick our news feed. We want to be comfortable and calm when we read.. we don’t want alternative viewpoints. If we are liberal, we will Raw Story it up. If we are conservative, we only check World Net Daily. Living in a comfort zone is the cruelest thing we can do to our brains…


And sadly, the mainstream media has become more biased.. it is no lie to say FOX has a conservative bent and that MSNBC cries when it uses the words “Trump” and “President-Elect” in the same sentence. CNN has just become horrid, filled with nonsense in between Wolf Blitzer screaming out states and numbers.


Earthquakes persist… war zones are intolerable.. people across the world are having real issues. And American has plunged into a red-vs-blue disgusting array of garbage. Nothing we argue about is real. Nothing we ponder and conjure means anything in the final analysis. We fell for it. Congratulations.


Sadly, this crackdown on fake news will end up hurting people who actually tell us real news.


This morning, the INTERCEPT broke a REAL news story about a building in New York City with 29 floors being the home of ‘Project X.’ The INCERCEPT reports that this building, also with an AT&T office, is the location for a very important national security surveillance site. The NSA uses the location to tap into phone calls, faxes and the internet. I can easily picture a future where someone will chime in that ‘fake news’ includes anything that compromises national security. That fake news is anything which…well…is real.
The next few years are going to be very trying for people with common sense. And sadly, some will fall by the wayside… The debate over nonsensical political events and purposely contrived news stories will be the front and center topic on nightly news. And dinner tables.


Recall during the Iraq war 2 when the Pentagon got into the business of news reporting. It was propaganda purporting to be reporting. And hell if I know how, but it worked. I can envision the same thing… Donald Trump is a master of media manipulation. At the same time, clickbait headlines are creating constant false narratives. The conflict is there..
New media vs old media is one thing. But real news vs fake is another.


The only judge and jury, and decider of what is real and fake is the consumer. And consumption of fake news is high.

…..and we create the next 1984. Someone needs to start writing “2084” now.. Will the next George Orwell please stand up…

Mystery flight circles over Denver; Officials have few answers

Mystery flight circles over Denver; Officials have few answers :

7news in Denver was among the stations covering the weird event.. The flight path was an oval over Denver .. The plane then apparently left the city limits and flew to Oklahoma City..

From the report:

When contacting the military, including both U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM), neither organization could confirm the identity of the plane, or even locate it. 

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) also investigated the flight, however they couldn’t locate the flight or confirm its existence. When asked if the flight might have been a high-profile person, officials said the only high-profile flights in the air were in New York and Indiana. 

The long-term side effects tattoo ink has on your health

The long-term side effects tattoo ink has on your health:

I was always told to ‘think before you ink.’ All the more important given the many awful chemical components that you can find in the ink being carved into your body..

Google, Facebook move to restrict ads on fake news sites | Reuters

Google, Facebook move to restrict ads on fake news sites | Reuters:

I hate click bait.
I hate fake news sites..
But we need to be careful about what we say is fake.. and we also need to frame this debate in an honest way as we step down into the removal of ads from ‘fake sites’..

For prime example, the question to Google “who won the popular vote” has brought people to a site called 70news.wordpress.com, which reported that Trump won the popular vote.. despite losing by 700,000. Their argument was if you discount about three million votes cast by 'illegals’ then Trump clinched it.. False representation of the truth. Of course. But to say it would be right for Google to pulls its ads from 70news.wordpress.com is also not true—GOOGLE does not permit ads on free Wordpress sites to begin with. And 70news when I visited actually has no ads and 521 likes on Facebook.

There are two possible reactions about to occur.. 1) We are going to finally rid social media of nonsense fakery. Or 2) The mainstream is going to use this chance to think big and attack its competitors: Independent publishers and reporters.

We have to think 'bigly’ about this .. and actually do the intellectually honest thing instead of just going with an emotion…

This is a screen shot from a YouTube video portending to show a...

This is a screen shot from a YouTube video portending to show a UFO crossing by a supermoon in Surprise Arizona on Saturday.. the user described the type of camera he was using.. other users have reacted…
And the rest is UFO history.

Unfortunately modern phone cameras can’t do ancient relics...

Unfortunately modern phone cameras can’t do ancient relics of space any justice ..

Enjoy the super moon as it rises
Find your best compromises
Don’t inflict pain.
Relish in satellites of all sizes.

Gwen Ifill, one of the most prominent African-American...

Gwen Ifill, one of the most prominent African-American journalists in the country, has died.. . She was 61.

She died after fighting a battle with cancer..

Trump: Twitter helped me win but I'll be 'restrained' now

Trump: Twitter helped me win but I'll be 'restrained' now :

scarystoriestouploadinthedark:

While covering and linking up several political stories over the past 15 months, I have primarily been silent as to the candidate of my choice. I will continue to do so, so nothing within this opinion relates to who I actually voted for this year.. Some time honored private matters, to me, are still cherished.

That said, I do not think the election of Donald Trump should be considered a surprise to anyone watching. Social media, the way we chat and chatter online, created this. We created this. WE made Donald Trump …

It also reminds me of using a spirit board.. or conjuring up something from another existence. If you really, really REALLY want to talk to a spirit, one may just talk back. Then you got your wish.
In our world, social media use and the quit hits of Twitter and Facebook have allowed us to dumb down political talk .. we have gone from large 10,000 word articles on the events of the day or week down to 100 character or so tweets. We decide on things after only glancing at headlines.. we do not check sources, but instead eat up anything we see on Facebook. So as long as we agree with it.

And that is another problem with modern social media. We do not find things to challenge our thoughts or opinions… we don’t want to be challenged. Instead we are given the ability to follow the places we are fans of on the newsfeed……and you miss valuable contrary information by doing so.

And the news? The news has become a victim, too. There is no ‘news’ anymore.. Today as Itype this there was a 7.8 quake off New Zealand and a tsunami warning. That is news. But it doesn’t sell in America. Instead the airwaves will be filled with indigestable political stories 24/7.

The protests against Trump are being made worse by a media that glorifies them. But when violence occurs, the media shutters back and quickly showcases brief and not-so-serious calls for calm.

Today on Twitter a friend asked me why I think Saturday Night Live was a fan of Hillary. She pointed out that Trump guest hosted the program. My answer was twofold. 1) Ratings. Trump equals ratings. 2) It was pre-extreme and pre-Muslim ban and pre-wall.

Trump used his social media influence in the 2016 election like no other candidate. Elections will not be fought on airwaves anymore.. radio ads don’t matter. TV ads just annoy. YouTube ads? They work… Social media platforms? They work. And sadly, fake clickbait websites work as well as the solid and reliable ones.

The 2008 election was the first time a candidate was able to harnass social media and Facebook to elicit donations and support among the young. In 2016, eight lightspeed fast years later, a candidate did not even bother raising money but instead used the platforms to gain a mass of people who, many of which never voted before, to vote for him.

It was the perfect storm in 2016..
You may not be happy with results. You may be one of those college students in certified ‘weep rooms’ or being told by university staff to form PlayDoh to express emotions (very silly in my thought)… or you are a member of the red state victors now hoping and praying that the president you so hoped for does not become a president you are not proud of.

We just don’t know.
We don’t have a clue.
A social media candidate is the modern day version of Mr Smith goes to Washington. But even Mr. Smith was forced to give more detailed thoughts on plans. And Mr. Smith was fiction!!!

Fiction is now alive and real in modern day 21st century politics.

A Congress, a Court, and a populace will now have to work and watch a President Donald Trump.

We got to know him (*kinda!*) through social media. And now as president, he says, he will tone it down. Backtrack… keep it less brash and unabashed.

…..perhaps that is the most interesting thing of all. Sure, social media changed everything. It changed how we read politics.. it changed how we vote.
But as Donald Trump is now realizing, it does NOT change how to govern….
We will now collectively watch how President Trump governs.

(Through it all, I still cannot stop to think about the Simpsons in 2000 predicting that a president Trump would happen……… wise beyond years)

A long read from my other site I thought you’d enjoy.

Today’s Drudge headline.. the story linked:Anti-Trump Protests:...

Today’s Drudge headline.. the story linked:

Anti-Trump Protests: 1 Shot After ‘Confrontation’ in Portland; Marchers Hit NYC, L.A.